SOURCE: Hegel, Robert E. “Man as Responsible Being: The Individual, Social Role, and Heaven.” In The Novel in Seventeenth-Century China,, pp 105-39. New York: Columbia University Press, 1981.

In this essay, Hegel examines the portrayal of individualism and self-indulgence in novels, including The Merry Adventures of Emperor Yang and Forgotten Tales of the Sui. Hegel finds that themes of fatalism and responsibility to the larger community counter individual expression for seventeenth-century Chinese authors.

Loyalty and integrity are lost in times of chaos; uprightness and honor become obscured. Today a subject of this contender, tomorrow following someone else. People become like sojourners, taking lodging in a variety of places. Like prostitutes, in body they serve many men in succession.

Yüan Yü-ling, c.1630¹

The first few decades of the seventeenth century, the end of the Ming, witnessed a growth of personal expression in the arts and individual self-indulgence unprecedented...